This invention relates to a door glass plate weather strip for vehicles which is generally installed closer to the roof of a vehicle.
It is desirable in order to improve the external appearance of the doors of a vehicle and to decrease the air resistance and the air shearing sound of a vehicle when run at high speed that a door glass plate weather strip is installed flush with the outer surface of a door (or the outer surface of a door sash). One example of a commercially available weather strip satisfying this requirement, as shown in FIGS. 4 and 5, comprises: a mounting base portion 1; a glass plate holding portion 10; and a bend lip portion 20.
More specifically, the mounting base portion 1 comprises an insert 3 buried in the body, and two pairs of clamping lips 5 and 6 extended inwardly for clamping the flange 22 of a door sash 21. As shown in FIG. 6, the insert 3 is made up of a number of strip-shaped members 3a which are covered with rubber and cut as illustrated so that it can be three-dimensionally deformed with ease. Thus, the mounting base portion is substantially U-shaped in section. The glass plate holding portion 10 is substantially quadrilateral in section (in verted trapezoid in FIG. 4 or 5), having an outer wall portion (becoming flush with a sash outer wall 24) 11, an inner wall portion 12, a sash engaging wall portion 14 connected between the upper edges of the two wall portion 11 and 12, and a glass plate engaging wall portion 15 connected between the lower edges of the two wall portions 11 and 12. One corner of the glass plate holding portion 10, i.e., the intersection 17 of the sash engaging wall portion 14 and the inner wall portion 12 merges with an outer free end portion 8 of the mounting base portion 1. The glass plate holding portion 10 is used to sealingly hold the peripheral portion 26a of the glass plate 26. The bend lip portion 20 has one end portion bent inwardly and the other end portion connected to an outer shoulder 7 of the mounting base portion 1. The bend lip portion 20 is used to sealingly push the inner surface 26b of the glass plate 26.
The weather strip is generally formed by extruding rubber material such as EPDM or CR or thermoplastic elastomer material of PVC or olefin group so that the glass plate engaging wall portion 15 and the bend lip portion 20 are sponge rubber (soft) and the remaining portions are of solid rubber (hard).
The conventional strip described above suffers from the following difficulties when installed on a door of a vehicle.
(1) At the straight part of the sash (line A--A in FIG. 8), the sash engaging wall portion 14 of the glass plate holding portion can be satisfactorily engaged with the sash inner peripheral wall 23 as shown in FIG. 4. However, at the corner of the sash (line B--B in FIG. 8), because of the difference in length between the inner and outer arcs the sash engaging wall portion 14 is spaced away from the sash inner peripheral wall 23 as shown in FIG. 5. This is undesirable not only from a viewpoint sealing effect but also from a viewpoint of design.
(2) As was described above, the strip-shaped elements 3a of the insert 3 buried in the mounting base portion 1 are partially connected to one another, so that sink marks are formed on the surface of the mounting base portion 1 as shown in FIG. 7. The sink marks thus formed are observed through the gap between the glass plate holding portion 10 and the bend lip portion 20 (as indicated by the white arrow in FIG. 4). Thus is undesirable from a viewpoint of design.